Detective Kitty... - NOT AVAILABLE

OVERVIEW

powered by AFI

Brief Synopsis

An amateur sleuth drives her boyfriend and the police crazy when she butts into a murder investigation.

When accountant Johnny Jones delivers $100,000 in securities to the office of broker Oliver Wentworth, he asks Kitty O'Day, his sweetheart and Wentworth's secretary, to have dinner with him. Wentworth, who is planning a trip to Boston, asks Kitty to pick up his train tickets and deliver them to his home that evening, forcing her to break her date with Johnny. Outside the office building, Johnny complains to Kitty that Wentworth is monopolizing her time and boasts that he would like to kill him. Johnny's threat is overheard by the cab driver who takes Kitty to the Wentworth house. Kitty arrives to find the house in total darkness because of a power failure, and is greeted by Charles, the butler, who directs her to wait in the study while Wentworth finishes showering. Noticing that it is getting late, Kitty knocks at the bathroom door and finds Wentworth dead, hanging from a rafter. The police are summoned, and Inspector Clancy declares that Wentworth was drowned and then hanged to make his death appear a suicide. As Clancy questions Kitty and Robert Jeffers, Wentworth's attorney, who had come to deliver some papers, the inspector's assistant, Mike Storm escorts Johnny into the room. Johnny, who has followed Kitty to the house, claims that someone knocked him out and left him lying in the grass, unconscious. Soon after, Mrs. Georgia Wentworth and her lover, Harry Downs, return from the theater and learn of Wentworth's death. After Kitty accuses Mrs. Wentworth of infidelity, the two women argue and Mrs. Wentworth leaves to spend the night at her apartment at the Fenton Arms. The next day, Kitty decides to solve the murder herself, and presses the reluctant Johnny into helping her. After visiting the police station to apprise the inspector that Downs and Mrs. Wentworth probably committed the murder, Kitty and Johnny proceed to the Fenton Arms, home to both Mrs. Wentworth and Downs. Outside the building, the two argue about the murder, and once again, the same cab driver overhears them. After ascertaining that neither Downs nor Mrs. Wentworth are home, Kitty and Johnny sneak past the desk clerk and disguise themselves as maid and porter. Soon after Kitty and Johnny slip into Mrs. Wentworth's apartment, Mrs. Wentworth returns home. Hiding her face with a feather duster, Kitty shoves Johnny behind the couch and begins to clean furiously. Downs, meanwhile, has discovered that his apartment has been burglarized and notifies the inspector. Deciding to leave the building, Mrs. Wentworth and Downs hand the inspector their keys and then depart. When the inspector opens Mrs. Wentworth's door, Johnny and Kitty climb out the window and along the ledge to Downs's apartment. After spotting them through the window, the inspector sends Mike after them. Climbing onto the roof and down the fire escape, the couple sneaks into Downs's apartment and then hides in the bathtub. The inspector trails them there, and when he pulls open the shower curtain, they find Downs's body, stabbed to death. Mrs. Wentworth arrives soon after and informs the inspector that Downs's real name was Jerry Benson and that he was using an alias because he had a police record. After Kitty accuses her of murder, Mrs. Wentworth fires both Kitty and Johnny and the inspector then dismisses them all. Kitty and Johnny next search Wentworth's office, where they find the securities in the safe and the butler's body in the closet. Notified about the intruders by the night watchman, the inspector arrives, and Kitty locks him in the closet and flees with Johnny. Upon reading in the morning paper that they are wanted for murder, Kitty decides to hire Jeffers to represent them. When Jeffers lights his cigarette with the lighter that disappeared on the night of Wentworth's murder, Kitty realizes that he is the murderer and attempts to leave. Pulling out his gun, Jeffers forces Kitty and Johnny into a cab and takes them to his apartment, where his gang is waiting. The driver recognizes Johnny as the man he overheard discussing murder, and sends the inspector to Jeffers' address. As the thugs demand that Kitty turn over the securities, the inspector arrives and arrests them. Kitty then explains that Jeffers was really a thief who was in league with the butler and Benson to steal Wentworth's securities. She continues that after murdering Wentworth, who was dealing in stolen securities, Jeffers decided to eliminate his accomplices. Climbing into the waiting cab, Kitty then extracts the securities that she had hidden under the seat and hands them to the inspector.